Crying Blue Murder (MIRA) (2 page)

W
ALKING
down Vrysakiou at the eastern boundary of the ancient marketplace, Alex Mavros spotted the shoplifter immediately. It was a little after ten and the sun was high in the sky, burning through the pollution cloud and suffocating central Athens. Tourists, thinner on the ground than they had been a few weeks ago during the high season, were picking their way in baseball caps and shorts through the shattered pediments and statues of the
agora
, their sights set on the Acropolis which was wreathed in scaffolding to the south.

As he watched the young man in the stained denim jacket and crumpled cream trousers, Mavros wondered why none of the shopkeepers had noticed the intruder. It was obvious that he didn’t have much to spend, but he was running his hands through the oversize worry beads and picking up green metal replicas of ancient statues as if he were a genuine tourist. Then Mavros saw a group of men on the road and realised that the souvenir sellers were engaged in animated conversation, their attention slack in late September after months of good business. He could have identified the shoplifter to them—the guy had just slipped a reproduction of a figurine in poor-quality marble into the inside pocket of his jacket—but he decided to start the day with a test of his professional skills.

The young man, his thin face and dirty hair suggesting he was one of the large Albanian underclass that scraped a living in the city, moved quickly away down Adhrianou towards the Temple of Hephaistos, his eyes averted from the shopmen, who were now shouting at each other. Mavros went after him, keeping about ten metres between them. It was easy enough to find cover by weaving between the foreign visitors, some of them carrying heavy backpacks. After a few minutes, he realised that the shoplifter knew what he was doing. The young man ignored every shop, kiosk and stall until he was well away from the one he had hit, only showing interest again after he had turned right towards Ifaistou, the Flea Market’s main thoroughfare. On it there were clothes shops and jewellers as well as stores selling tourist junk. He headed for a place festooned with watches and raised his eyes to the goods.

Mavros approached him slowly from the rear. This time the shopkeeper was alert, his gaze levelled immediately on the badly dressed individual in his doorway. Mavros thought about it. Either he could wait to see how desperate the guy was—how much he needed something to trade for food or drugs—or he could intervene before things got nasty; shop owners had been known to beat the hell out of thieves, especially if they were Albanian. The young man raised his hand towards a fake silver watch that probably wasn’t worth more than a few thousand drachmas and Mavros decided to act.

‘Don’t touch it,’ he said in a low voice, standing close behind the shoplifter. ‘You understand Greek?’

Dropping his hand, the man turned to Mavros. His eyes took in the sunglasses, the shoulder-length black hair and the unshaven face, then were lowered to the white T-shirt and faded blue jeans. The alarm that had initially tightened the sallow skin on his cheeks was replaced by a look of incomprehension. ‘Who are you?’ he asked in heavily accented Greek. Although undercover police patrols operated in the Monastiraki area, they didn’t make a habit of smiling at their prey.

Mavros beckoned him away from the shop to a neighbouring doorway. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a
batsos
.’ He used the colloquial term of opprobrium for the forces of law and order that equated them with physical punishment.

‘Fuck off then,’ said the Albanian, making to walk away.

Mavros caught his arm and looked into his open jacket. ‘I think you’d better give me that,’ he said, nodding at the blank, angled head of the stone figure that protruded from the shoplifter’s pocket.

‘So you can keep it for yourself?’ the young man asked bitterly, displaying uneven stained teeth.

‘No,’ Mavros replied. ‘So I can give it back to its owner.’ He opened his eyes wide, hand extended. ‘Please?’

The Albanian looked surprised by the politeness of the appeal. After a few moments’ thought, eyes flicking up and down the crowded street, he decided against further resistance.

‘Thank you,’ Mavros said, taking the replica. ‘Here,’ he added as the shoplifter turned away. ‘Get yourself something to eat.’ He gave the young man a five-thousand note.

The Albanian stood speechless, his lips apart. Then his mouth formed into an incredulous smile. ‘Are you a madman?’ he asked, tapping his head.

Mavros laughed. ‘Maybe. Go to the good, friend.’ He was pretty sure that the shoplifter wouldn’t take the words literally.

Back at the shop where he’d first seen the Albanian, Mavros waved the owner over from the heated debate about the latest foreign coach of the Olympiakos football team.

‘Good morning, Alex,’ the bald souvenir seller said, his eyes falling on the off-white stone sculpture. ‘What are you doing with that?’ He looked towards the shop. ‘Is it one of mine?’

Mavros nodded as he handed the figure to him. ‘You should be ashamed of selling rubbish like this, Kosta. The original Cycladic pieces take people’s breath away. This just makes me want to throw up on your shoes.’

The tourist shark raised his shoulders, unconcerned by the quality of his wares. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Did you let another thief go? Mother of God, Alex, why didn’t you hand him over? How are we supposed to make a—’

‘Bye, Kosta,’ Mavros said with a wave, heading off down the street again. The sharks made so much money from the tourists that they all had German cars and holiday homes with swimming pools on the coast of Attiki. What good would another Albanian in the cells do them or anyone else?

Mavros turned up an alleyway off Adhrianou towards a door wreathed with honeysuckle. Although the plant was well watered, the entrance to the small
kafeneion
was distinctly unwelcoming. The green paint had been in need of a new coat for years and the sign—
Tou
Chondrou
, The Fat Man’s Place—was hanging at an angle from the lintel. It was all part of the plan, as was the narrow passage beyond the door filled with cardboard boxes and empty bottles. The owner didn’t want tourists cluttering up his café. He didn’t really want anyone cluttering up the place—a year in prison during the dictatorship hadn’t done much for his sociability—but he made a few exceptions.

‘Good morning, Fat Man,’ Mavros said as he went through the main room with its back-wrenching wicker chairs and out into the shaded courtyard.

The sole occupant didn’t look up from the book propped against the chill cabinet with its meagre selection of cheese and vegetables. ‘Morning, Alex.’ Although the standard diminutives of Alexandhros were Alexis or Alekos, Mavros had always been known by the foreign form. Cynics like the Fat Man reckoned he stuck with it because he wanted to be different.

The courtyard, confined by the high walls of the surrounding buildings, was given shade by a wooden pergola that supported a spreading vine. As it was late summer, the branches were hung with bunches of dusky green grapes. The wasps and other insects they attracted were being enticed through short lengths of bamboo into plastic bottles containing sugared water; once in, they never found their way out and eventually drowned.

‘When are you going to pick those grapes, Fat Man?’ Mavros shouted as he sat on the canvas-backed chair he always used. ‘It’s like a zoo in here with all these creatures. Or a slaughterhouse, more like.’

The café owner—Yiorgos Pandazopoulos by name, but never addressed as such except by the hygiene inspectors, tax officials and policemen he despised—peered out into the yard. ‘I like watching them die slowly,’ he said, a slack grin appearing on his heavy features. ‘You should get into it, Alex. Just imagine they’re right-wing politicians.’

Mavros groaned. ‘For God’s sake, give it a rest. And bring me my
sketo
, if it isn’t too much trouble.’

‘Right away, sir,’ the Fat Man replied with mock servility.

Mavros shook his head. ‘You’re living in the past, my friend. The old ideologies are dead and buried. No one cares about them any more.’ He looked up at the drowsy wasps in the bottles above and breathed in the scent of grapes that were beginning to rot. ‘Everyone in Greece is too busy making money these days.’

Shortly afterwards the Fat Man shuffled out, a stained white apron stretched over his swollen midriff, and placed a minute cup and a glass of water on the metal table with incongruous delicacy. ‘Go to the devil, Alex,’ he said, staring belligerently at his only customer. ‘What do you know about this country? You’re not even a real Greek.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Mavros said, taking off his sunglasses and running a hand through the swathes of thick hair that had swung down and obscured his vision. Then he picked up the cup and breathed in the dark, unsweetened liquid’s sublime aroma. Whatever else anyone said about the Fat Man, he made the best coffee in the city.

‘Don’t start what again?’ the café owner said, planting his thick legs apart on the gravel floor. ‘Are you or are you not half Greek, half
Anglos
?’

‘Wrong!’ Mavros shouted. ‘I’m half Greek but not half
Anglos
. How many times do I have to tell you?
Anglos
means English. My mother is Scottish.’

The Fat Man had raised his eyes to what was visible of the fume-choked sky. ‘Screw you, Alex. You know well enough that
Anglos
means British in the common tongue.’

‘Well, it shouldn’t,’ Mavros replied, blowing over his cup. ‘
Anglos
is English and
Skotsezos
is Scottish. You know which blood I’ve got in my veins.’

‘Anyway, who cares about that half?’ the Fat Man said. ‘They’re all capitalists on that rain-soaked island. Your father was Greek, you’ve lived in Greece most of your life, you did your national service here.’ His brow furrowed. ‘You’ve no right to give up the struggle, you traitor. Your father won’t be resting in the grave, he’ll rise again as a vampire…’

‘Come on, my friend, give me some peace,’ Mavros said, glaring at the imposing figure. It always amazed him how difficult it was for even committed communists to free themselves from the superstitions of the Orthodox Church that they had imbibed as children. ‘Vampires? What kind of shit is that?’

‘And what kind of shit is that job you do?’ the Fat Man demanded, changing his angle of attack. ‘Private detective? Private nose in other people’s business, I say.’ He leaned over his customer. ‘You’re no better than an underwear-sniffing cop.’

Mavros had his hand over his eyes. He had woken up with his head throbbing and it was worsening by the minute. ‘Go away, will you, Fat Man? I’ve spent the last week looking for a fifteen-year-old junkie who went walkabout. The parents— remember those boutique owners from Kolonaki?—won’t pay me the balance of my fee because they say he was on his way home anyway. I don’t need this from you, not this morning.’

The Fat Man was nodding his head. ‘See? What do you expect if you work for bourgeois wankers from the arsehole of Athens.’ Kolonaki, ‘Little Column’, the area to the northeast of the parliament building, was the most upmarket district in the city. By coincidence, and to the delight of people on the left,
kolos
also meant ‘arse’. ‘Oh well,’ the café owner said, his tone softening, ‘everyone has to work, I suppose. Do you want some
galaktoboureko
?’

Mavros looked up. ‘Have you got any left?’ The Fat Man’s mother made a tray of the custard-filled filo pastry every morning, but it had usually been devoured by the early-morning trade and his interlocutor by this time.

‘For you, Alex, anything,’ the Fat Man said, the irony less sharp than it could have been.

‘Bring me a couple of aspirins as well,’ Mavros called, glancing at the ponderous form in the kitchen and flicking the pale blue worry beads he’d been using to distract himself since he’d given up smoking a year ago. He’d known Yiorgos since he’d roamed the backstreets around the hill of Strefi in central Athens as a kid. The Fat Man was eighteen years older than Alex, making him fifty-seven, but he’d always had a soft spot for the boy. Mavros was sure that Yiorgos had initially befriended him because his father, Spyros Mavros, was a high-ranking member of the Communist Party. But a deeper friendship had developed over the years, one based on their mutual antipathy towards authority in any shape or form. Except Mavros had taken that a lot further than his friend by steadfastly refusing to join the Party. He had seen too much of the damage caused by strongly held beliefs. What Yiorgos said about everyone having to work was a bad joke. His mother, now in her early eighties, kept the café going with her cooking and cleaning, but only just. The Fat Man survived by running illicit card tables late at night. If pressed, he justified himself by giving a sly smile and characterising Marx and Lenin as political gamblers.

The pastry and pills arrived, Mavros washing down the latter with the unchilled tap water the Fat Man had brought. He took a forkful of the
galaktoboureko
and closed his eyes as the glorious flavour of the filling flooded his taste buds. ‘Aaach,’ he moaned. ‘How does she do it? It gets better all the time.’

The café owner nodded, his jowls wobbling. ‘The crazy old woman won’t tell me the trick, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘So when she goes…’

‘Come on, Fat Man,’ Mavros complained. ‘I’m eating my breakfast and you’re talking about dying?’

‘What’s the point of keeping quiet about it? We’re all going to die some time.’

Mavros looked at his watch and waved him away. Any minute now a potential client would be arriving. He took his notebook from the pocket of his jeans and reminded himself of the name. Deniz Ozal. Turkish, but the accent on the telephone was American. He said he’d been given Mavros’s name by Nikos Kriaras, a police commander the US embassy had contacted on his behalf. Apparently his sister had gone missing. So Mavros had told him to come to the Fat Man’s. That was his version of the café owner’s test. Any clients who turned tail at the sight of the run-down dive weren’t serious enough for him. The Kolonaki boutique owners, dressed up in the latest outfits from Paris, had probably been excited by the sensation of slumming; and by the smell of the
galaktoboureko
, which the husband had paid substantially over the odds to sample.